prevent notification when saving a comment

Question

Hi.

It's Eric again.

Often when I'm composing a comment on a jira item, I need to temporarily investigate something or interrupt myself to do something else.

To not lose my comment as composed so far, I want to click "save".

But it's not done yet, so I don't want an email to go to all the listening people yet.

So I'm looking for some sort of "save as draft" button that would save it but not send notificatoins yet.    Is there some way to do this now?   If not, could we please have it?

Eric Osman · Answer

Here's the workaround I've started using:

Suppose item 123 is in "testing" status.

I want to make comments on that item that record my results of testing but I DON'T want notifications to be sent to listeners until I'm DONE testing.

As mentioned, I really wish there were a "don't notify listeners" checkbox available.

But since there isn't, I now make a subtask and mark it "related to" item 123 and give it a title of "testing notes for 123".

I can put comments in that subtask all day without fear of disturbing anyone with notifications.  Then when I'm ready, I can copy my comments into 123, which will notify the listeners.

Eric Osman · Answer

There would be many use cases for the "DO NOT NOTIFY" button.

Here is a common use I run up against on a daily basis:

I am in charge of TESTING user stories, each of which is documented as a Jira item.  Typically, I have to do a dozen or so tests before dispatching the Jira item either to DONE or to REWORK.

For each of the dozen or so tests I do for the Jira item, I describe the test in a comment in the Jira item and put in the words SUCCESS or FAILURE.

Let's say I've done 6 out of 12 of those tests, and then the system i'm using for testing becomes unavailable for awhile.  At the point, I want to record my results so far in my comment on the Jira item, so I know where to resume testing later when the test system comes back.

So I'd want to check the DO NOT NOTIFY checkbox just before clicking SAVE on my comments, so that emails won't be sent for this comment yet.

Then later, when I finish testing, I'll update the command and click SAVE without clicking DO NOT NOTIFY, at which point Jira can send the normal email notifications.

Eric Osman · Answer

I have just changed the title on this, since from a Jira developer point of view, a simpler way to satisfy the request here would be the following (instead of implementing the concept of "draft comments"):

Have a "DO NOT NOTIFY" checkbox next to the SAVE button.

PURPOSE:   When saving a comment that you know is not done yet, prevent email from being sent to those listening to this topic.  The intent is that later, when you finish the comment, you will click SAVE without clicking "DO NOT NOTIFY", at which time the normal email notifications will be sent.